Quake3World

I dunno. You guys are smart. so I was readin up on that q3 unlagged thing, http://www.ufreeze.com/?page_id=22 and it sounds tight and all, but do you think somthing like this could be done for other games? I don't know much about netcodes and that stuff, but from what I've seen halo pc and quake are simillar in netcodes. Both games you have to lead your target. In Halo PC, the other guy is actually a step ahead of where he really is, and I think it's the same way in q3 after playing it.

So do you think it's possible to unlag a game like halo pc? Even if it requierd a client side download? BTW isn't q3 open source now or somthing? because a game like halo pc isn't, and it isn't very modder friendly.

halo's a really good game, but halo pc..not so popular anymore. It used to be great, and it was played a whole lot by tons of teams. People started getting sick of the lag, not just the aim lag but the warping that occasionally happend, and so the game died out. A "De-laggionater" came out on halo:CE, (custom edition of halo PC) and it was interesting to say the least. It worked sometimes, you could aim at the person and actually hit them, but it was very buggy. Sometimes it made your game warp extremley bad, sometimes it didn't work, so it just never really took off.

this is a quake forum but whatever. Halo has like 4-5 really GOOD, smart, original modders. The rest make stupid little maps that look cool and all, but have terrible gameplay. The amount of stupid mods and maps is amazing. I've only seen like 5 good user made maps.

The whole time-delay thing has been around since QuakeWorld was released. If you ever played Q1 without QuakeWorld on a modem, it's easy to see why the lag is necessary. It's the tradeoff for smooth predictable gameplay.

The problem with unlagged mods is consistency. With regular client-side prediction (the behaviour you see in online games where players are slightly ahead of where they appear, and you must lead shots), your shots are always 'true' and if you really did predict where the enemy is in a split-second's time, you really will hit. Likewise, if he really did dodge your shot, you miss.

With unlagged, the principle is that your computer predicts where the player really is (compensates for time delay). Now, if you shoot at where your PC says he is, you'll hit regardless of whether he really was there or not (say, if he dodged). Problems with this are it's obscenely easy to cheat with this, since the server is trusting the player's game, rather than the game server, to verify shots. Second, skilled players actively dodge shots, and unlagged mode removes this ability. Essentially, one of the big skills of the game is removed (two really because you take a lot out of the aiming skill needed)

Anyway lecture over. Yes it can be done for any FPS game with comparable netcode to Q3 (that is, just about all of them), but it's not that desirable because of the drawbacks (above).

Foo wrote:The whole time-delay thing has been around since QuakeWorld was released. If you ever played Q1 without QuakeWorld on a modem, it's easy to see why the lag is necessary. It's the tradeoff for smooth predictable gameplay.

The problem with unlagged mods is consistency. With regular client-side prediction (the behaviour you see in online games where players are slightly ahead of where they appear, and you must lead shots), your shots are always 'true' and if you really did predict where the enemy is in a split-second's time, you really will hit. Likewise, if he really did dodge your shot, you miss.

With unlagged, the principle is that your computer predicts where the player really is (compensates for time delay). Now, if you shoot at where your PC says he is, you'll hit regardless of whether he really was there or not (say, if he dodged). Problems with this are it's obscenely easy to cheat with this, since the server is trusting the player's game, rather than the game server, to verify shots. Second, skilled players actively dodge shots, and unlagged mode removes this ability. Essentially, one of the big skills of the game is removed (two really because you take a lot out of the aiming skill needed)

Anyway lecture over. Yes it can be done for any FPS game with comparable netcode to Q3 (that is, just about all of them), but it's not that desirable because of the drawbacks (above).

thanks for the good reply...

Now, if you shoot at where your PC says he is, you'll hit regardless of whether he really was there or not (say, if he dodged)

now halo pc is a much slower game, and I couldn't see this being any more then a minor problem. There's no real "dodging" in halo, just strafing really. If i'm getting this right could someone be behind a corner, but if the other player saw him out in the open after him just poping his head out, that player behind the wall could still die? I could see it a problem in quake with it being so fast and all, (btw just started playing the game and love it) but halo pc i don't think it'd be that bad. And someone has created a "punkbuster" type thing, (not the real one) so I don't think cheating would be a problem.

so this makes me really, really interested. How would someone make this "unlagged" thing? I'm guessing there would be a server app, and a client app, and they send info back and forth? Like the client thing would say, "that person should be dead now." and then it send that info to the server? And then the server makes it happen? would anyone here be willing to make one for the game..? or any information on how to do it? I couldn't do it because I don't know anything about this stuff, but I know a few people who might be able to if they had somewhere to start.

any help would be appreciated.

Flare wrote:now halo pc is a much slower game, and I couldn't see this being any more then a minor problem. There's no real "dodging" in halo, just strafing really. If i'm getting this right could someone be behind a corner, but if the other player saw him out in the open after him just poping his head out, that player behind the wall could still die?

Yes, that's right. The game client on your side would basically say to the server 'yes, I hit him', and the server would acknowledge this (despite the fact that from the server's perspective, you missed).

I could see it a problem in quake with it being so fast and all, (btw just started playing the game and love it) but halo pc i don't think it'd be that bad. And someone has created a "punkbuster" type thing, (not the real one) so I don't think cheating would be a problem.

You're right here too, but if Halo is slow enough for these inconsistencies to not matter, then it must also be slow enough that the time delay has less of an effect on the game. In quake, you might have to shoot a long way in front of a player moving fast to compensate for 100ms of lag, yet if you're moving slower in halo that compensation would be much smaller. At a guess, I'd say this is why unlagged stood more chance of being created for Q3 than slower games.

so this makes me really, really interested. How would someone make this "unlagged" thing? I'm guessing there would be a server app, and a client app, and they send info back and forth?

Typically with FPS games, there are 3 components to the game: The game engine, the game code, and the media. While companies don't release the code for the engine, they release the code for the game (which is the code which sits on top of engine and governs the particular game using it). Presumably, the unlagged modification for Q3 uses the game code and the Q3 engine exposes enough to the game code to make this possible. I don't know too much about coding for Q3 but I guess this is how it must be.

Like the client thing would say, "that person should be dead now." and then it send that info to the server? And then the server makes it happen?

Yep. Although maybe more along the lines of:
Client 1: I hit client 2 with railgun
Server: Client 2 health = 35 - 100 = 0. Client 2, you're dead
Client 2: o rite *blah*

would anyone here be willing to make one for the game..? or any information on how to do it? I couldn't do it because I don't know anything about this stuff, but I know a few people who might be able to if they had somewhere to start.

any help would be appreciated.

You're looking at hundreds of man-hours of work. If you can scrape some talented coders together, obtain the game-code, and consult someone who has knowledge in the field (one of the guys that rolled the unlagged patch for Q3, for example?) you'll be set

:icon25:

Foo wrote:
You're looking at hundreds of man-hours of work. If you can scrape some talented coders together, obtain the game-code, and consult someone who has knowledge in the field (one of the guys that rolled the unlagged patch for Q3, for example?) you'll be set

:icon25:

all that isn't gona happen. thanks anyways, atleast I know it's possible

Foo wrote:With unlagged, the principle is that your computer predicts where the player really is (compensates for time delay). Now, if you shoot at where your PC says he is, you'll hit regardless of whether he really was there or not (say, if he dodged). Problems with this are it's obscenely easy to cheat with this, since the server is trusting the player's game, rather than the game server, to verify shots.

That's not true, Foo. Unlagged is first and foremost server-side. You're probably thinking of ZeroPing.

It works like this: the server keeps a history of player states to 500 or 1000 ms back. You, the client, receive a snapshot containing the position and velocity of your opponent. You fire and your client sends off the command and its timestamp. Upon receiving, the server steps back to the moment it sent off that snapshot to you and interpolates player positions from there to the timestamp. Only then it processes the shot and you get a frag (or not).

Foo wrote:Second, skilled players actively dodge shots, and unlagged mode removes this ability. Essentially, one of the big skills of the game is removed (two really because you take a lot out of the aiming skill needed)

We're talking about 1/20th of a second on regular servers here (and 1/30th or even 1/40th on the competitive ones). Human reflexes are not that fast.

^misantropia^ wrote:We're talking about 1/20th of a second on regular servers here (and 1/30th or even 1/40th on the competitive ones). Human reflexes are not that fast.

Then you concede that the unlagged mod is only worthwhile for modem players?

Foo wrote:Then you concede that the unlagged mod is only worthwhile for modem players?

Well, anybody who wants to play on a server they ping more than about 60ms too. Human reaction time is about 100ms. I've always thought of how laggy something feels in terms of this. You really start to feel the effects of lag once it becomes the dominant factor, i.e. greater than human reaction time.

It's worth pointing out that unlagged is an approach that favours the shooter over the shooted[sic]. This is because it is based on the viewpoint of the client, rather than the server. The net result is that the player being shot at may get hit even though they are behind cover in their perspective. "Normal" Q3 gives neither party an advantage. I'm not saying I think this is particularly bad; actually I think unlagged is a good approach. I'm just pointing out that there are drawbacks too.

Foo wrote:With regular client-side prediction (the behaviour you see in online games where players are slightly ahead of where they appear, and you must lead shots),

That's not client side prediction under any normal definition. Client side prediction doesn't have anything to do with other players. What prediction does is to run a copy of the player physics code locally on the client in parallel with the server. The local copy is used for display and feedback to the player that their keyboard and mouse input is having an effect. If this was not performed, the player would need to wait (i.e. ping time) for the server to react to player input -- everything would be laggy, not just weapons. The server copy of the physics is used to enforce consistency if for example the client experiences some packetloss. The client may think the player has moved forward, when the server has never received such input. The easiest way to see what client prediction is doing is to play on a server with a high ping with it turned off (in Q3, cg_noPredict 1 from memory).

[confusing bit you probably shouldn't read]Q3 does do a thing called client side item prediction where it predicts whether or not items are picked up based on the predicted physics. But this is still nothing to do with predicting the state of other entities.[/confusing bit you probably shouldn't read]